The good and the bad of a potential Alzheimer's target

June 27, 2008

Research in fruit flies has shown that enhancing the production of a protein called neprilysin can reduce the formation of plaques and neuron death associated with Alzheimer's, at the expense of reducing the flies' lifespan.

The buildup of amyloid-beta protein plaques within the brain is a major hallmark of Alzheimer's, and one that is believed to contribute to disease progression. Normally, special enzymes chew up and clear these plaques, and deficiencies in these enzymes are one potential disease cause.

In fact, one major amyloid degrader called neprilysin (NEP) decreases naturally with age and may be the reason the elderly are more at risk for Alzheimer's. Enhancing NEP production might therefore be an attractive therapy, and studies in mice have suggested it has potential. However, no studies have really looked into possible adverse effects of over-activating NEP (after all, nature probably turns it off for a reason).

In this study, research groups led by Koichi Iijima and Kanae Iijima-Ando did just that, using transgenic fruit flies expressing human NEP and/or amlyoid-beta protein. On the positive side, NEP expression did reduce plaque deposits and neuron damage in the flies as expected; on the other hand, NEP also reduced the activity of important neural proteins called CREB proteins and shortened the average lifespan of the flies (normal flies live about 60 days) by about 10 days (although NEP-flies did live longer than those only expressing amyloid protein).

This study illustrates the care that must be taken when considering Alzheimer's treatments, and that it's critical to better understand normal aging when dealing with Alzheimer's or other age-related conditions.

Related Stories

Neuroscientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) are part of a collaboration that has succeeded in demonstrating that overexpression of an enzyme in the brain can reduce telltale deposits causally linked with Alzheimer's ...

Recommended for you

A biomedical breakthrough published today in the journal Nature reveals never-before-seen details of the human body's cellular switchboard that regulates sensory and hormonal responses. The work is based on an X-ray laser ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- The ability to remember the past and imagine the future can significantly affect a person's decisions in life. Scientists refer to the brains ability to think about the past, present, and future as ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- By implanting an electrode into the brain of a person with locked-in syndrome, scientists have demonstrated how to wirelessly transmit neural signals to a speech synthesizer. The "thought-to-speech" process ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Most people can easily tell the difference between reality and fantasy. We know that characters in novels and movies are fictitious, and we also understand that historical figures - even if we’ve never ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Humans don’t always make the most rational decisions. As studies have shown, even when logic and reasoning point in one direction, sometimes we chose the opposite route, motivated by personal bias or simply ...

0 comments

Please sign in to add a comment.
Registration is free, and takes less than a minute.
Read more

Click here to reset your password.
Sign in to get notified via email when new comments are made.